


and the stinging subsides eventually

by joeri



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Cutting, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Self-Harm, healing fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 02:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15451794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: as if it's something to be ashamed of— as if he's an utter embarrassment.note: not a shipping fic.





	and the stinging subsides eventually

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this because i'd been having a hard time lately. partially inspired by an experience i had over a year ago and partially inspired by my dear friend who is always patient with me who doesn't know i wrote this and i probably won't bother them with it. i'm just glad they're in my life.
> 
> this is not a romantic momoharu fic, for personal reasons pls dont call them anything but friends in this, thank you.

“How did you deal with it?” he asks in a voice that no one else would think belongs to him.

It’s a voice Kaito’s never heard outside of his own head. His vocal cords don’t ordinarily know how to sound so… _lost,_ apologetic almost in it’s execution, even though she’s reassured him it’s not, not not not, and could never be something worth being sorry for.

When she moves to brush his arm, he prickles like a hedgehog. His hair stands up, and she pulls the hand back, perceptive. Maybe not perceptive so much as _knowing._

Kaito’s flinch, automated, was born out of fear. Out of love, he reaches to take her hand in his. Maki’s hand can withhold his squeezing, amplified by the need to remind that he does not think she can hurt. She’s a good sport all in all.

“I didn’t,” she says, the gap putting a rock in Kaito’s throat. “For a while, I didn’t. I didn’t really know how to… not.”

His face goes on to make the tops of his knees its grave, sheltering his eyes from the blinding fluorescents of their shared bathroom. The stinging in his legs mocks him. The stinging at the sides of his eyes is worse, _so much worse._ Disgust coils in him and no matter how many times he scratches or takes a blade, he can’t get it out—

“Momota, talk to me,” Maki says in that way she always does when he’s doing _this_ again, when he’s holding his thoughts in again.

“I don't do this often,” he contests, as if that's a valid argument (it's not) and hopes she'll let him live this down, as if it's something to be ashamed of— as if he's an utter embarrassment.

She sighs in a tone that would appear agitated if not for the way she snatches a washcloth from the cabinet beside them and fills it with water. Wringing it out slow, she takes careful, furtive glances back down as if she’s afraid that he’ll fall apart in the time between. He’s staring headlong into the floor and she takes care to step into the bedroom and turn on the light in there so when she steps back into the bathroom she can turn this light off.

Just enough floods in from the bedroom to allow Maki to still see the planes of his face crystal clear— the ways that his eyes look sunken in and his eyebrows are knit in humiliation. Nonetheless he seems to be thankful for the lack of lighting by the way he reorients himself upright and casts a shameful smile her way.

“Thanks, the…” he gestures at the ceiling. “Was… blinding m-”

“Move,” she murmurs, insisting with her hands that he let his legs down.

Hesitantly, Kaito peers back and forth between her and the rag in her hands. Feeling sheepish, he rolls up the sleeves of the hoodie he’d worn to bed.

“I got this—”

“That’s not what I asked you to do,” Maki reiterates, pinching his knee and dragging it towards her.

Kaito gives a little, allowing her to move him freely while he fixes his brows into a jagged little shape. He admonishes himself quietly. Outwardly, he says, “you don’t need to worry about me.”

Maki taps Kaito’s knees, showing a great deal of care in getting his consent to help where he thought she’d be sharper. If out of nothing else but respect for her desire to go this far, he lets his feet slide along the bathroom tile slow. Once his legs are straight, she lifts his boxer legs just so, just enough to see lines of red crying into the fabric. The body hair can’t hide them. Kaito frowns deeper.

“It’s fine, Harumaki, you can just—”

“This is how I dealt with it,” she says, soaking his leg with the rag and steeling herself for when he winces. “Someone took me in and cleaned it. Someone took care of me when I didn’t want to take care of myself. Sometimes, before you can take care of yourself, you need to be shown that you’re worth taking care of. Sometimes, I think, you only know that you should when someone else takes care to make sure you know.”

“Someone?” he mutters, conclusions coming easy as he thinks about the past. “Was it…”

Maki nods, and Kaito’s eyes get glassy.

“But… but you were so young. You— Nothing bad had happened yet,” he argues.

“Do you want me to tell you I’m lying?” she asks, and his mouth turns small. “We don’t decide why we feel this way. We don’t decide that and we certainly can’t control it.”

Rubbing the rag up and down his leg, Maki watches as the reddened skin begins to soothe, at least a little. Thankfully none look too deep to need suturing. Kirumi wouldn’t mind but… Kaito cringes at the idea of anyone else finding out about this. It’s bad enough that one of his sidekicks knows. He swallows his bottom lip when she gets to the other leg.

She’s leaned across him now, caressing in slow circles. Kaito’s not sure why but his chest tightens up. He feels tears coming but he doesn’t want them to. He doesn’t want the weakness, the insecurity, the _mortification—_

“H… Harumaki,” he speaks in a choked up breath.

The moment she sits up right, Kaito’s arms encircle her. His grip is tight, but she relents. Maki reaches around and pats at his back like she’s done to so many others. They were children though, and this is her best friend.

“You don’t gotta do this for me,” he says, throat clenching like there’s a frog that’ll jump out if he doesn’t. “I know I gotta be proactive about this stuff too, you know… the stuff I’m always telling Shuichi about—”

“I’m doing this for you anyways. Don’t try to change my mind.”

Maki shouldn’t be glad when she hears the garbled sniffling of his sinuses, but knowing just how often the man actually gets to cry, she can’t help but mouth a soft _Hallelujah._

“That’s fine,” he whispers, taking a brisk pause before his voice croaks out a confused, “what do I do then?”

Smiling to herself, she smears a comfortable circle into his back.

“Well, you thank me for helping you, for starters,” says with more enthusiasm than she means. “And then, you tell me what you wanna watch when we’re done.”

Feeling altogether silly for this whole event, Kaito sniffles and laughs as he hides his chin in the crook of her shoulder.

“Yeah, my bad. Thanks, Harumaki.”

And the stinging subsides eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> i never thought i'd have to say this on a fic about healing from self-harm, but im tired of deleting negative comments from this. if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all.


End file.
